Absolutely lovely fantasy novel, set in Renaissance Italy, featuring an endearingly good-hearted, sweet-natured hero who is by heritage a witch and by preference an alchemst, plays the lute - literally taught by an angel - and cooks up medicine for townsfolk who don't all appreciate or even like him. It's not a nice world, however. The town is invaded by mercenaries and the townsfolk flee, leaving him behind. He sets out after them, accompanied only by his talking dog, and determines to keep them and the town safe from war and conflict, little realising what a daunting task he sets himself: selling his soul to the devil being only one of his varied efforts. It all has the feel of some sly medieval tale, Dante by way of Eco, with an innocent everyman beset by worldly and otherworldly problems alike, with his willingness to make almost absurd personal and spiritual sacrifices for people who barely know him and generally don't appreciate him and a town that he only loves because it happens to be where he lives, propels him headlong to a kind of saintliness that would be ridiculous and even cruel if Damiano wasn't intelligent enough to be aware of it. Damiano is fun, clever, touching and unusual, about the cost of being nice for the sake of it in a world with lots of bad in it.